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Congratulations to you! A typically thought-provoking article, articulating a very “common sense” approach.

(Just ignore some of the comments below your piece; it’s the ignoranti at work again.)

Tomppeli

As a father of two sons in their early twenties, I’ve got something to add to the list of the “male plight”: it’s very difficult to rent an apartment, and when you finally get one it’s likely to be on the wrong side of the tracks or far away. I’ve never found any studies on that but, at least here in Finland, it’s so obvious that you don’t need any.

Ferrum Itzal

I thought you were pretty spot on until you started blaming “the rich”. An elite political class, yes. But “rich” isn’t a defined term. You are far wealthier than I am, by a long shot, and I would definitely consider you rich.

The only reason politicians are rich is because a poor man can’t afford to run for office.

Political Class, Political Dynasties, Political Elites – basically anything that points to the specific problem of long-term politicians that are able to build small empires. The presidential term limits were put in for good reasons, and every single one of them could also be applied to congress. Truth be told, the lobbyists don’t pay much attention to the token figurehead of any nation when all they can do is sign a bill into law and campaign for this or that. The real decision-making goes on in the legislative branches of government who decide which bills will be passed to the figurehead for that signature.

Tyler

I think ‘political class’ (or equivalent) would work well. Because that’s really the problem: political power. Having money may buy you nice things, but all those transactions are technically voluntary, even if not always equally beneficial. Political interactions are involuntary, because the basis of political power is force. Obey my command, or go to jail. Do as I say, or I’ll take your home. Not buy, take. It’s the modern equivalent of the biggest guy in the tribe being the one with power, because he can beat anyone up who defies him.

A person with no political power can only become rich by making a good product and good business decisions (and yes, sometimes taking advantage of situations to the detriment of others). But a person with political power can destroy competitors, win contracts they don’t deserve, and in extreme cases compel the use of their product (incandescent lightbulbs, anyone?).

Commanding obedience while offering no incentive, only threat, is a very unfair interaction, and that’s what the exercise of political power is.

Those who become rich through political pull deserve all the scorn. Those who became rich without it have created the vast wealth we currently enjoy.

Yeah, the social justice, “eat-the-rich” thing bothers me to no end. Most of the people ranting about how unfair the wealth distribution is are insanely wealthy by the standards of the average of humanity, even if you include all of history in your sample.

Especially so.

The socialite liberal living in the coastal states is stupidly wealthy to a poor kid in appalachia, but that liberal is the one complaining about wealth distribution. That kid in appalachia is insanely wealthy when compared to a starving waif from Ethiopia. That waif from Ethiopia has it pretty good when compared to a Jew in a concentration camp. There will always be someone who has it bette than you. This class warfare bullshit is an absolutely retarded, zero-sum game that leads to no where but envy and ruin.

The problem is not people who have accumulated or inherited wealth – no man in business in America today accumulated a plug nickel at someone else’s expense, or off of taking advantage of someone else’s hard labor, unless he did so illegally. The idea that because a man has money, he has somehow done something evil to get it is the very core of the rotten center of Marxist thought, and it is just so wrong that I cannot even fathom how one could be so stupid as to listen to it. If he benefitted from another’s labor, he did so because he paid that other a fair wage for his work. No one took advantage of anyone there.

The problem lies with the people who have accumulated or inherited wealth that was gained, not by producing wealth, but rather by pulling the levers of power through political cronyism. These are the people, like Nancy Pelosi’s husband, that miraculously continue to land mutli-million dollar government contracts that they are obviously not qualified to deliver, or who manage to get laws passed that eliminate competition by creating barriers to entry or sole-source specification.

These are the bankers that got the government to pass laws encouraging them to provide insanely risky loans to insanely un-loan-worthy people at insane profits, with the promise that they’d be bailed out with taxpayer money if it all went to shit.

These are the unions that got the government to illegally dissolve contracts between investors and the auto companies, screwing millions of investors out of billions of dollars, so that the politically connected could get their payola.

You want to rant about the rich? Let me make a point that might stick in your craw for a bit:

I have never once in my life worked for a poor man. Every man that has ever given me a job, and allowed me to earn a wage that I used to support and raise my family, has been a rich man.

Fuck this social justice, income equality bullshit right in its ear. It is just so much rotten thinking by a rotten ideology that has produced rotten results every time it has been implemented, and you are way above that.

Personally, to rant against these folks, i like the terms Oligarchy or cronyists. The amount of their wealth is not the problem. The amount of illicit power that they’ve managed to bribe themselves into having over their fellow man IS the problem. The wealth is merely incidental.

JShaft

One thing I’m really liking about this movement is it hasn’t picked a side re: Left-Right.

I think whet I’m still trying to learn in this new environment is how not to yell at political positions I disagree with and find logically flawed. I don’t want your voice not to be heard, and you’re arguing for my cause in the end. Plus, it takes as much energy as I have to fight against Feminism, so fighting against others within the movement, when they aren’t actively working against our goals, or handing live rounds to those in the other trench (who’ve been shooting blanks for decades), seems to me to be massively counterproductive.

So, I guess I’m trying to make it clear that I’m not angry at you, not against your right to your opinion, but I still need to question your Manichean, dualistic logic. X = bad, therefor Y = good just doesn’t hold up. So, Marxism = bad, therefor Free Market Capitalism = good just doesn’t hold up as an argument. I doubt anything I say will change your opinion however, so I’m not really even trying here. All I ask is you apply more rigorous logic to your arguments against Feminism than you do to your pro- Free Market Capitalism arguments.

You don’t get to say “you are wrong and illogical” and then not provide examples or argument otherwise.

You’ve reduced my argument to a straw man of Marxism bad/ laisesez faire capitalism good with no supporting evidence, told me I’m wrong and that my argument is illogical, and then expected everyone to take it at face value that you’re right and I’m wrong without presenting a damn thing to contra-indicate anything I just said.

In debate class, you just lost.

In logical discussion, you just lost.

Pony up or take your weak-sauce crap elsewhere.

The only system in the entirety of human history that has produced wealth and freedom is the free market.

Every other system, including this facist-cronyest shell that we have today, has reduced freedom and increased misery. Every time. Without exception. Just one example otherwise and I might be inclined to listen. But there is not one example. In the 30,000 some odd years that civilization has been around. Not one.

So let’s hear it. What’s your grand plan? What idea do you have that’s been tried in history, ever, that has worked better?

JShaft

Reread please. I said “I find your argument illogical”. Hope capitalism provided you with a school that didn’t encourage you to jump to highly judgmental conclusions based on your misreading of a sentence… I also didn’t staw-man or reduce your argument for free markets over marxism, you provided no evidence or clarity beyond this position in your post, and I was merely commenting on that… Like, you know, when you then demanded evidence from me? That was kinda what I was doing first…

Oh, and if you could read the repeated statements of disinterest in having this debate with you just one more time, maybe through the lens of me being some kind of intellectual coward who you have vanquished, as opposed to someone who wants this discussion to be taking place in this space in the first place, that’d be great.

Seriously, let me stay with my stated love of working with you for a common good, rather than wishing you’d shut up… You’ve already taken me at my friendliest and most jovial as some kind of foam-speckled Hard-Leftist nutjob, so now you’ve confused, judged and insulted me, I really doubt we’re gonna get along for a while…

“I don’t want to discuss this with you, but you’re wrong and illogical.”

Stellar debating style, there, scooter.

You keep throwing insults about my intellect and my logical process, but keep failing to back them up with anything other than “trust me, I know what I’m talking about but I’m just so far above this that I don’t want to discuss it.” To a feckwit, that is a great way to win an argument where you know you’ve got nothing, but can’t admit it, and just deflect the discussion.

You want to back up your accusations of poor schooling, bad logic, and so forth, go for it. Otherwise, don’t make the accusations. It’s chicken-shit.

That isn’t what I said. It isn’t what I argued. it isn’t anywhere in my statement, anywhere. You assumed that, and made a straw man out of it. Period. That’s an easy way to win a debate in the eyes of the simple minded, but it is far beneath a person of your intellectual prowess. I promise. I’ve read your stuff. You’re a smart dude.

I can argue for the free market from any angle you please. There’s nothing Manichean about it. It isn’t because Marxism is bad that I’ve come to the conclusion that free markets are good. It’s because every single logical exercise that I’ve ever undertaken has lead me to the conclusion that freedom, wealth, and prosperity are the inevitable result of free markets, whereas corruption and misery becomes the norm as soon as you start to erode them beyond simple, reasonable regulation.

And don’t fall back to the old standby “you didn’t read what I wrote.” I read it just fine.

JShaft

Not only did you provably not read what I wrote last time, you didn’t read it that time either. If you reread the first post of mine, I make the point that I may disagree with, and see no logic to your position on one front, as it makes no difference to this particular issue, on which we generally agree. Also, I state categorically that I: A) disagree with your position on Free Market Capitalism; B) Probably have been made aware of all the points you’re ever likely to make in favor of such; C) Am unconvinced of any of them even being vaguely relevant to my thought processes; D) Would have no interest whatsoever trying to change your mind; E) Have no interest in hearing the same arguments I’ve already found to be wanting; F) Even if I did, I think this is the least helpful or appropriate forum in which to do so; G) I was making a point about how we can agree to disagree and still work together; H) The only thing you are going about disproving is point G.

Feel free to frame this as intellectually lazy, but I couldn’t give a fuck really. Your arguments are boring and reductionist, as well as extreme, and fundamentally stupid due to the extreme part. No one mode of society holds within it all the good, and no one mode holds all the evil. Your free market medical system has the single worst track record for health in the developed world. The US currently has parasitic illnesses and preventable diseases at numbers not otherwise seen outside of the third world, and no corporation is ever going to make money off fixing it. There are many endeavors of the human spirit that just don’t pass a profit/loss assessment.

This is my understanding of reality, and no amount of money fixes it. Corporations are citizens, and Free Market Capitalist ideals would love to see those citizens less beholden to the law than you or I. Deregulating corporations is like deregulating criminal law, because most people don’t murder.

Now, grow up, stop picking fights with people who are trying to nicely agree with your reasons for being here. Or don’t, and prove yourself the fuckhead I presume you are.

Good day sir.

FuzzieWuzzie

In reading your post on Thought Catalog, the realization hit me out of the blue. Those women whispering in your ear were instilling fear. That is the foundation of power for feminism, simply to instill fear of men in women. Only a woman can address this from a first person perspective. That explains why women are such powerful advocates for anti-feminism.
This is profound stuff. I hope that you can run with it or pass it along to someone who can.

That was an excellent, reasonable article. Hopefully it will drive a lot more traffic to your blog. It is true what you said about not having to agree with everything said to support a particular movement – In fact it is quite dangerous to do so.

I set up an email address to use for conference related issues and then didn’t check it for a month and forgot that I sent the Thought Catalog piece from that address.

*facepalm*

Incompetence is the word,I think.

JShaft

Very nice article!

Uncalledfor

It’s a fine achievement, JB. And may have some effect on younger female readers that they’d never feel from reading a man’s writings — we’ll have to see, at least some of the comments are promising.

At the risk of asking too much, though, I have to say that I did feel something was missing, that I kept waiting for but you never delivered; and now I have to wonder whether that’s something you really believe/understand or not. So I wanted to put in a thought suggestion, to whatever staff you have handling your correspondence 🙂

In my opinion, the “big fish” of how feminism has impacted American life negatively, is that it’s forced men into a double-bind where it’s difficult if not impossible, particularly for a younger man, to lead a life that is at once both moral and decently human. And, not to obfuscate, here you can specifically read “doing what authority says is the right thing” for “moral” and “having an actual sex life” for “decently human”.

It’s a story that I’m sure you’ve heard before, but I wonder what you think about it. To me, the acts are crystalline and unquestionable. Feminist-inflected polite society tells men that the highest possible value, the most moral behavior, is not to be a sexist: don’t enforce or expect any traditional sex roles, or any pre-imagined asymmetric sex roles at all; idealize the words “equal partner” as the highest kind of relationship; never assume an attitude of automatic leadership or superiority, ala “I’ll be in charge, for no reason other than that I have the penis here.” In the feminist-built society, the “sexist jerk” is the lowest form of male life, to be shunned, shamed and ridiculed at every opportunity. How dare you act or think like that!

The practical rub, as we all know after living in America for a while after puberty — though it takes longer to dawn on some of us than others — is that following this notionally anti-sexist feminist value system, while it may be highly moral and even lower your cholesterol, _will_ put a young man quite behind the eight ball (that means “at a severe disadvantage”, for the younger readers) when it comes to having a sex life. I hope I don’t have to explicate this point as a matter of observable fact; though if you disagree then you can start an interesting conversation in a number of places about it.

Feminists, quite predictably, refuse to countenance that their moral framework puts men in such a dilemma, and so will screech with cognitive dissonance whenever the truth threatens to shine through. This is the root of the “Nice Guy canard”, for example: feminists cannot admit in their minds that the “nice”, moral, decent behavior that they insist on actually works against a man’s ability to lead a decent human life, and so they must instead find a way to blame the man himself — these denunciations are necessarily illogical and fact-free, for obvious reasons, and make for painful and infuriating reading. To learn a little more, you can get an extended version of this story from Karen Straughan in this classic video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9XDb0nxSO4 . The piece runs only 29 minutes (substance starts at 1:45, real denouement at 22:30), but it may take you a bit longer than that if you want to read all 19,000 comments (!).

There are many more illustrations, of course, and many have sprung up in the wake of the Elliot Rodger tragedy. Two examples of “Toxic Masculinity Must Die!” that I caught in the polite liberal media, both written by card-carrying, feminist-minded men, are (http leaders removed to avoid possible spam filtering):

There may be some actual argument to be made there; but both of these authors fail immediately, in my opinion, because they abjectly refuse to recognize, even when it’s pointed out explicitly in the comments, that men’s need to act masculine is policed largely by women. Not some disembodied entity called “society” or “culture”, but by specific, individual acts of women, who may talk a good game about wanting egalitarian behavior but are going home with the “sexist jerk” at the end of the evening. You can’t prescribe a better future if you can’t acknowledge a big part of what’s happening in the present, and this is a general reason why feminism seems so lunatic and out-of-whack in so many ways these days.

Anyway, that to me is a big issue with how feminism is affecting the modern world, and I wanted to ask if we could have your thoughts about it. Keep up the good work.

Uncalledfor

Test — I submitted a long-ish comment that hasn’t appeared, after several tries; I thought it was worthwhile, hope I’m not somehow banned and in disgrace….

Judgybitch I love you, not in a stalkerish way but in the way a Man finally sees another woman (Other than my Wife of course) who’s level headed and isn’t full of shit. You inspire confidence in me that there’s hope left in the world for Good Women. Men always been the typical assortment of either assholes or good guys but Women over the years have degraded severely into horrible sub classes.

Thanks for being who you are.

Uncalledfor

JB — Thanks for fixing that and getting the comment up. Whininess aside, I am a bit surprised that no one bit on this one over the last few days. But that, too, is information. Anyway, thanks again for the sub-publishing, and keep up the good work.

Liz

Awesome writeup, JB.
And awesome parenting for your wee son when he first started school. You rock. 🙂